All You Really Need to Know About Them

Carbon peddling poop-stain Hugo Chavez brings down the house in Copenhagen with another one of his gentle, thoughtful, treatises:

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

Not that it gets any better, anywhere, inside or out. The UN had to throw out protesters whose bidding the UN is there to do. All you really need to know about them, and the entire shambles of a “movement” is evident in their reaction. They would prefer that the conference not take place at all if they can’t squat the lobbies.



The irony is that these feral children have the arrogance think that they’re “saving the world” and “saving lives”, when all they are, in fact, are unproductive political parasites trying to remander other peoples’ resources. They bear an uncanny resemblance to violent adolescents who have so little life experience that they follow radicals blindly, as we’ve seen in the past with “peace” movements, cults, and various flavors of authoritarian Communism.

It Causes Earthquakes Too?

From the opening ceremony's video of a little girl running from an earthquake to the promises of emissions reductions, everything taking place in Copenhagen is contrived. The outcome of climate talks -- no treaty, no emissions reductions -- was known in advance. And yet participants pretend there is an unfolding drama. As such, Copenhagen is history's first completely postmodern global event. It's a festival of phoniness. With the ambitions of Versailles but the power of Davos, Copenhagen creates a cognitive dissonance for its creators, which results in ever-more manic displays of apocalypse anxiety and false hope. In the end, Copenhagen tells us more about ourselves -- our post-American world, our fragmented media environment, and our hyper-partisanship -- than about any attempt to slow global warming.

- Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
of the Breakthrough Institute

And further in a paean to the bobo-ism that typifies academia, the European world view, and a moderate-seeming resolution to the impotent rage of “our betters”:

In this, Copenhagen represents the first truly postmodern global event in human history. Other generations had Versailles, Yalta, Bretton-Woods -- agreements that re-organized nation states and shaped the modern world. We, by contrast, have Copenhagen, which has no power to do anything. In reality, Copenhagen is no more effectual than the made for media confabs like Davos. But the United Nations, multinational green groups, and sympathetic reporters have succeeded in creating the impression of action where there is, in fact, none at all.

Don’t be surprised if they DON’T understand that what they want will result in the enlargement of the poverty gap, and thanks to the “science” that they will take to be “better than nothing”, founded on nothing. Absolutely nothing, as there is no objective proof that man can passively alter the temperature of the world’s atmosphere, let alone hack nature out of it’s own patterns and force it to refrigerate itself.

But “correction” of anything real is not the purpose, given this unaddressed trend that continues today:

Between 2000 and 2005, European emissions grew twice as fast as America’s. Emissions in Canada grew a whopping five times faster. Since 1990, Germany and Britain reduced their emissions, but they did so for prior reasons having nothing to do with global warming: Margaret Thatcher broke the coal miners’ union in the early 1980s, moving Britain to cleaner-burning natural gas, and the East German economy collapsed after the fall of communism, reducing a reunified Germany’s reliance on dirty coal plants. When you remove these two from the calculation, European emissions rose almost 12 percent between 1990 and 2005.

I hope this puts the anger, the lectures, the vile harangues, and the looks askance in some kind or perspective, one that’s doesn’t set out to scare children or convince an otherwise able population to believe that Global Warming caused a tsunami or an earthquake.

Goodnight, Copenhagen. Like the response to the name “Kyoto”, as a city you are now just another place linked to a massive fraud, and possibly the most oppressive limitation placed on the human potential of the poor humanity ever imposed on itself. Not that "summits" have any more meaning or inspire any more awe anyway.

Like so much else, summitry is a concept or brand that has been abused and trivialized, as Cadillac was for many years. If Copenhagen deters the world’s publicity-seeking official conferenciers from trying to squeeze any more juice out of the summit lemon, it will be a howling success. Only the countries that mistakenly expect to receive compensation for their impoverished inability to generate carbon emissions, or for the falsely pledged reduction of them, will pay any attention to the pious frauds that the posturing busybodies of Copenhagen may claim to agree to implement.

Case in point: the EUvian habbit of naming some purposeful sounding declaration after a city where the media circus is brought to, as if, some day, they will all be discussed in detail as the "Treaty of Paris" was for two centuries. The cities after which they are being named are becoming progressively less known and smaller, because they appear to be running out of them, at least the ones that sound politically correct.

I mean can you picture a treat or declaration being named after Luton? It'll happen about two decades after they have completely run out of ways to seem high-minded.

"The Trolley was Undamaged"

Sarkozy seeks the creation of a new international monetary system

Nicolas Sarkozy "is setting up real strains with the Obama administration", says John Vinocur:

In little-publicized remarks Dec. 1 — buried under Nicolas Sarkozy’s gloating over placing a Frenchman in a European Union post with potential oversight on the run-and-gun British financial sector — the French president announced that he would seek to create a new international monetary system that doesn’t solely revolve around the U.S. dollar.

“A new international monetary system is required,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Following World War II, there was a single superpower in the United States, and it was normal that there was a single great currency. Today, we have a multipolar world, and the system must be multimonetary. In the world as it is now, there can’t be submission to what a single currency dictates.”

Mr. Sarkozy, speaking just ahead of regional elections in March, gave a time and place for enacting his plans — 2011, when France holds the presidency of the Group of 20 global economic consultative body, and, not entirely by accident, the year before presidential elections here and in the United States.

Incidentally, the Europeans' hype for Obama had all to do with a person they thought would bring America down while elevating all others (something some of us still have reason to fear, but which they — the Europeans — are feeling increasingly resentful that he isn't doing).

The issue was also present in an essay published in the leftist newspaper Libération in mid-November by Zaki Laidi, a professor at Sciences Po here, who said — could Mr. Sarkozy have noticed? — that after a year of global economic crisis, the United States retained not only its world economic and strategic dominance but also what he called its “instinct for power.”

Mr. Laidi wrote, “We’re being told that America is on the decline and Barack Obama is the representative of an America that voluntarily accepts playing a multipolar world game. These two hypotheses, at best, are highly questionable. It’s impossible to see why Washington would accept structuring a world order while it continues to have sizable advantages.”

…Mr. Sarkozy is not an anti-American, but he may regard standing up to the Yanks as a multipurpose tool in the campaign to come. In his incomparable book, “L’Ennemi Américain,” Philippe Roger describes anti-Americanism as a constant of French political life, “halting hostilities between factions in the face of supposed common enemy” and in “manufacturing a tissue of consensus.”

Not to Mention Man-made Global Warming...

Who IS that reality-based community you ask? Gee – according to 98% of the press, academia, and anyone the left can pistol-whip, those leftie munchkins who consider their collage of policy tirades a philosophical foundation.

New study: More Democrats than Republicans believe in ghosts, talking with the dead, fortunetellers

Which makes the whole “pro-choice vegan” thing a lot clearer, not to mention the belief that crushing public dept is good, and that unless we devolve into an ignorant and grindingly poor agrarian society that the future will be altogether unpredictably gassy. I mean the waters might keep rising by 3 millimeters a year, just like it did in the last century.

"many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects."

Thus attributing it to “some Americans” we find the Pew elves find a nice way of obscuring deltas on the order of 2:

For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so.

Which explains the charisma with which Nancy Pelosi’s town hall meetings are greeted.

Either way, what we’re talking about beliefs that are philosophically and theologically meaningless forces regarded as putting the choices in our lives beyond our control, ones that do nothing to inform human morality or force the exercise of self-examination - being far more likely to bedevil the minds of leftists, that anonymous lot sold to us as our thoughtful and more worldly betters. In reality they look more like spiritual vagrants searching for the unreal and meaningless to tolerate the real and meaningful.

The Purple Helmets of Peace Strike Again

Same as it ever was. UN backed troops, taking the place of professional soldiers doing peacekeeping, have been engaging in the kind of rampage that has come to be associated with the words “U.N.” and “Peacekeeping”. As usual, they weren’t just massacring civilians, they were more interested in getting a piece.

More than 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls were registered at health centers during that nine-month period, nearly double that of 2008 and likely representing only a fraction of the total.

Human Rights Watch said that the 19,000 peacekeepers in Congo — the biggest U.N. force in the world — must "immediately cease all support to the current military operation" until it can ensure there are no violations of international humanitarian law. The group also called for the U.N. to find "a new approach to protect civilians."

In other words, something a little more like those awful Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a little less like those lionized by bobs as “doing God’s work.”

Is there any reason to be surprised? Hell no! That was all just oh-so last year! The force in question is composed as it is because of a failed Europeans commitment where the world was supposed to thank them for the fine conference accommodations where the press conference took place, but expect nothing in the way of peacekeeping troops in their former colonies:

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said ministers would discuss Mr Ban's appeal, but added: "Let me also underline that the situation on the ground is getting slightly better, and politically also."

But non-governmental organisations poured scorn on any suggestion things in eastern DR Congo were improving, saying rape, murder and pillage was still rife in the region.

'Situation is dramatic'

The 27-nation EU has so far been reluctant to commit forces to the Congo to back a 17,000-strong UN force, Monuc, already on the ground.

Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht said before the discussions: "It will take four to six months before the additional troops for Monuc will arrive and the humanitarian situation is dramatic over there."

Belgium has been the most outspoken European country in appealing for help for DR Congo, its former colony.

Again, they closed their eyes and wished for peace, so (again) they should not be surprised as what that gave them. Speaking in 2008 on the subject on behalf of this “peacey-peacey superpower of lurrrrve”, Sarko said:

“You can't be everywhere all the time,”

Or in France’s case, failing to support a force to the point where it really can’t effectively be anywhere.

Allô, Coucou! We Make Revolution Today?

Do please define often, would you old chap?

The language Esperanto is often used to access an international culture,

...

Every year, hundreds of new titles are published in Esperanto along with music. Also, many Esperanto newspapers and magazines exist.

Today would be the 150th birthday of the inventor of Esperanto, an language promoted by the former Marxist-Leninist communist states where hardly a soul learned it, and present day Marxists, who for the same reasons think that it makes sense to homogenize humanity into a single servile monoculture speaking an indistinct babble aggregated entirely of European languages. A lot like EU legislative proceedings if you ask me.

Europeans, being the only people on earth that matter, and are, like, "global," saw a great coming together in that idea of peddling this eurocentric language on the rest of humanity, some largely as great way to be "International" and as in "5th Internationale", and others, because, well, "world" means "them". To wit, the amusing characrterization of the organic growth of English being a reason to "carry the flag" for this thing which calls itself a movement, but feigns to have no ideology:

In France on Monday, the Le Monde daily ran a full-page ad by the European Esperanto Union under the breathless headline, "Europe is suffering under the domination of the Anglo-American language."

In other news, not widely associated with any comment of that nature, the Francophonie is promoting the French language under the same banner, berating people with what they will think is a sort of guilt which should, as a movement with no ideology either, cause someone who self-selected to learn english, to use French for the same non-ideological, pan-galactic, humanistic reasons.

It’s all part of the loving and caring thing, which is honky-dorey, so long as they run the show. It explains the lack of support the Maoists gave the Marxist-Leninists promoting it, who could as Asians indeed smell the stench of underhanded cultural colonialism from that far away.

Step aside, Saint Augustine

There’s a new religion in town, and you’re all doomed to irredeemable guilt. Forever.

US supporters of a strong climate deal in Copenhagen on Saturday lit candles and erected a mock Noah's Ark in Washington, warning leaders that the planet faced a crisis of biblical proportions.

The rally in view of the US Capitol was the culmination of a day of demonstrations around the world including in the Danish capital where tens of thousands took to the streets near the venue of the 194-nation summit.

Another ‘official day of rage’ if you will, which is exactly what you need if you’re founding a civilization-killing concept on a philosophical-sounding notion that has no objective scientific proof, nor an actual philosophy. It’s theology without all that theo stuff which aligns rather oddly with some way serious haters, also begging for an apocalypse to come along and prove them right.

The United States is the only industrial power to shun the current Kyoto Protocol, but Obama has pledged to work with other nations on drafting future action against climate change.

No, the United States is one of the only nations that doesn’t regularly signs things and then promptly weasel or ignore the commitment.

Only Siberia was colder

We need to send Al Gore to Edmonton to clear things up (merci à Frank)…

Edmonton was the coldest place in North America yesterday morning and the second chilliest in the world.

The Edmonton International Airport saw a record low of -46.1 C and -58.4 C with the windchill, outfreezing even the Arctic.

"The cold high pressure has been moving down from the Arctic over the Prairies," said Environment Canada meteorologist John McIntyre, adding British Columbia and Saskatchewan also experienced plummeting temperatures. "We are right now in the centre of the heaviest, coldest air."

Better Living Through Arson

“Passionate” Environaughts in København are doing their bit to “save the planet” by vandalizing property and having carbeques.

We’re still waiting for the Carbon Liberation Movement to claim responsibility. Clean and Green, Spic and Span, La-dee-da-dee-dah

Euro-rific Social Solidarity

Following a botched back operation on France’s most famous Elvis impersonator, fans of Johnny Hallyday assault the über-Euro-surgeon who screwed the pooch. Hallyday is now at Cedar-Sinai in LA getting “inferior, third world medical care”. Apparently Cuban medicine would be too good, or something, and of course because it’s France, the President is required to get involved, and you have to have an ineffectual “vigil” for some reason, and probably not covered by even a French medical insurance rider policy.

Highly Recommended: Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom

It is my opinion that a modern history book on the Civil War or on the life of Abraham Lincoln without a reference to Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom, however brief, can only be incomplete. But not only books on the Civil War and Old Abe, along with tomes discussing of the rights and/or wrongs of secession.

More than that: any book on Thomas Jefferson, on James Madison, on the revolutionary era, and, in fact, on American history in general, old and modern, without a reference to Harry Jaffa's latest book is incomplete, as is any book on today's liberal and progressive ideology…

Some excerpts of the book that discusses natural law versus positive law and constitutional rights versus revolutionary rights, while mentioning Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government:

No one can write properly about the American Civil War without taking note of the fact that Jefferson, in 1774, declared the "abolition of domestic slavery" to be "the great object of desire" in the American colonies

Slavery, of course, is nothing but taxation without representation carried to its ultimate extreme

Individual rights become valuable only insofar as they result in a good society — a society in whcih man's moral and intellectual virtues can find their fullest measure of opportunity. There is in Jefferson none of that radical individualism that sees the rights of the individual transcending and opposing the moral demands of a good society. The opposition between the demands of society and the rights of the individual, so familiar in our time, arose only as those rights were no longer understood to be natural rights subject to the natural law.

An elected government has no more moral or legal right to arrogate authority or employ powers not delegated to it by the people through the Constitution than a nonelected government

No one can rightfully demand obedience of another, however plausible his claims to superior ability, until he has proved that his ability will be devoted, not to exploiting, but to benefiting the other

Jefferson: "that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them"

A morality governed by prudence is largely beyond the ken of our latter-day abolitionist historians. For them, prudential compromises in dealing with slavery are regarded as mere excuses for inaction. They have much in common with Chief Justice Roger Taney, who in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declared that the Signers of the Declaration of Independence could not have regarded slavery as wrong, since they did not abolish it — ignoring the fact that, in any event, they had no power to abolish it! For such historians as these, the portrayal of a "racist" American Founding is a necessary preamble to the disavowal of any authority to the principles of the Revolution, notably those enshrined in the Declaration

We understand … why it is against our interest to become tyrants as why it is in our interest to prevent tyrants from ruling us. That is the argument of Plato as well as Aristotle. It is the argument of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address. Yet it is an argument held in almost no esteem today. How is that possible?
The answer is that in our time, truth has been disarmed by the opinion that reason is impotent to know what it just or unjust, right or wrong, true or false. If there is no truth, or if the truth is beyond the power of the human mind to know, then free argument and debate as means of arriving at the truth are meaningless. Truth is thereby disarmed of her natural weapons a priori. This challenge to the principle of a free society is one that neither Jefferson nor Lincoln anticipated. Nonetheless, we assert categorically that the common sense of the subject as it appeared to Jefferson and Lincoln, although it has been denied by the mainstream of Western thought for more than a century, has not been refuted.

Self-realization was in fact the only correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self. Each human being was to be his own God, obeying only those restrictions that were enforced upon him by the fact that he was not yet himself the universal tyrant. In time, however, Science would enable everyone to act as if he were the universal tyrant.
As these doctrines were filtered trough the intellectual establishment of modern liberal regimes, of which Chief Justice Rehnquist is a typical representative, the emancipation from morality was itself seen as moral progress, and the opponents of that emancipation were seen as the reactionary enemies of both freedom and morality. The essence of the new Liberalism was to make each human being, as far as possible, a universal tyrant within his own world, commanding all the pleasures possible in that world, and emancipated from everything except those limits upon his power which Science had not yet conquered. Thus would the return to a Garden of Eden — but one in which there would be no forbidden fruit — be accomplished.

The great proposition of human equality, the central idea of the Gettysburg Address as of the Declaration, … means that laws are rightfully for the benefit of the governed, not of the government. It means that those who live under the laws should share in making them and that those who make the laws must live under them.

It was hardly remarkable that a nation of slaveholders, upon declaring independence, did not at once abolish slavery. What was remarkable — perhaps more remarkable than any other event in human history — was that a nation of slaveholders declared that all men are created equal and thereby made the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity.

Some latter-day critics of Lincoln wrongly attribute to him the leveling egalitarianism of twentieth-century socialism and welfare statism. In taking property from those who earn it and giving it to those who do not, in coming between the hand and the mouth of the producer or laborer, such egalitarianism reproduces the essential characteristics of slavery. Lincoln's doctrine of the relationship of capital and labor, which he elaborated in his first annual message to Congress, proposes no such thing. For Lincoln, the guarantee of rights means the guarantee that there shall be no intervention by law or government, as far as possible, between the work of any man's hand and his mouth

Those who live under the law have an equal right in the making of the law, and those who make the law have a corresponding duty to live under the law.

It is impossible to understand the quarrel over the right of secession that Lincoln addresses on July 4, 1861 — as it is impossible to understand either the American Revolution or the Civil War — without understanding the divergent interpretations of this doctrine [the right of revolution] of the Declaration as applied to the transformation of the Union from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution

The freedom and equality of rights propounded in the American Revolution were never understood to describe conditions belonging to or enjoyed by human beings without struggle or effort. They were not "entitlements" in the sense of gifts bestowed from above

[A historian like] Allan Nevins … thought that the institution of slavery was wrong because it was anachronistic, differing in this from Lincoln, who held slavery anachronistic because it was wrong.

Since Napoleon, the plebiscite has been the resource of tyrants to claim democratic (or republican) legitimacy for their regimes

Interview with the Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson:

Almost everything, the great statements of Lincoln, most of them are reviving and rephrasing things that he got from Jefferson. In the Notes on Virginia, Jefferson says that "Will the liberties of the people be secure when we have abolished their only sure foundation, the belief of the gift of God may not be violated but with his wrath?" And that is followed by "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just." Lincoln's second inaugural was all there, see?!

What is the institutional root of evil in the world in which we inhabit? There is no question but that it is in the universities. That's where the teaching begins, that's where the high school and grade school teachers go to college and they learn that morality is subjective and they think [that] that is sophisticated thing to say

Imaginary dialogue with Ted Bundy: "I used to believe that [in the moral law] until I took my first college course in philosophy"

Fun for the whole family

An article from the BBC on-line which may just leave you in stitches. First, the set-up:

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.

"Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2035," the report said.

It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected.

Some kill-joy had the unmitigated gall to actually look into the matter:

The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

Naturally there is this:

He is astonished they "misread 2350 as 2035". The authors deny the claims.

And then this bit:

When asked how this "error" could have happened, RK Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC, said: "I don't have anything to add on glaciers."

Odd how this all happened anyway, the "2035" sources look like they are rock solid:

The IPCC relied on three documents to arrive at 2035 as the "outer year" for shrinkage of glaciers.

They are: a 2005 World Wide Fund for Nature report on glaciers; a 1996 Unesco document on hydrology; and a 1999 news report in New Scientist.

And just in case you were wondering:

Incidentally, none of these documents have been reviewed by peer professionals, which is what the IPCC is mandated to be doing.

Laughter is indeed a wonderful way to keep warm on these cold winter nights....

French Health Care: "l'opération était un massacre"

French health care is the best in the world and a model to follow (Ah que coucou à Jan), as American doctors intervene to rectify a French doctor's "massacre" on Johnny Hallyday's back by placing the French singer in a coma…

Jean-Claude Camus [le producteur de Johnny Halliday] a mis en cause le médecin français l'ayant opéré en novembre d'une hernie discale, responsable selon lui des complications observées par les médecins américains.

Après son opération dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi, le chanteur a été placé dans un coma artificiel de façon à soulager ses douleurs.

It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action

It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action. If the public begins to wise up to the distortions and exaggerations, elevate the threat warning from dire to urgent.

David Limbaugh has more:

The alarmists tell us that the incriminating e-mails do nothing to discredit global warming science. Well, if that is true, why did these top-gun environmentalists believe it necessary to cheat and lie? If the science is so clear, why did they have to cherry-pick their data and rig the evidence? Why did they have to "hide the decline" of the "real temps"? Why did someone destroy the underlying temperature records that could either support or undermine their catastrophic conclusions? …

Perhaps the culpability of many rank-and-file leftists should be understood in light of their mind-numbed credulity over the alarmists' claims and the Draconian solutions they offer to avert their mythical Armageddon. These leftist sheep seem engaged in a chimerical search for significance apart from God, whose existence their worldview rejects but for whom their hearts cry out in a self-muted cacophony.

Teleologist-in-Chief: Teleology explains everything Obama has done, with regards to foreign policy, economic policy, dealings with Congress, etc…

Why does teleology (in this mutated form) matter?

asks Steven den Beste (tak til Instapundit).

Because right now we have a teleologist as our President. what’s really going on is that Obama has this kind of world view. And that explains everything he’s done.

It explains his foreign policy. To a teleologists, it just makes sense that everyone should want to get along. If you unclench your fist and hold out your hand, everyone else will unclench their fists, and become your friends. So Obama is doing that, and as we know the result has been a shambles.

It explains his economic policy. Teleologists inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free health care to everyone without wrecking the economy; it’s just how things really should be, so that’s how it will be. Where will the money come from? That’s the kind of question that materialists ask; teleologists don’t concern themselves with such trivial. It’ll happen somehow, because it’s obviously how it should turn out. To say we shouldn’t do it is to be heartless, uncaring — and those things are more important than mundane claims that it won’t work. If you just believe, it will work.

Of course, it won’t work. The materialists are right about that. But when it fails (if it gets tried) the teleologists will blame the negative vibes of all the materialist doubters for the failure. If only they’d come on board and supported it, then it would have come out OK.

It explains his dealings with Congress in general. He has been telling Congress in very general terms what he wants from them, and seems to think that this is all he really has to do. He wants the bills enough so that Congress will spontaneously create exactly the bills he wants and send them to him as soon as he says. Nothing else need be done by him except to want them.

Hey, Lefty Chumps!

Are you done embracing their worldy ‘worldiness’ in your Fair Trade underoos?

Proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. Even landlords could be imprisoned for renting to homosexuals.

Those seeking ‘climate justice’ and other class warfare arguments need look no further than their own ability to be vile, which is about the same as any other human, no matter what their ‘class’ or virtuousness by way of perceived victimhood status, only to have to grade one victim class over another.

How about THIS idea: decide to defend INDIVIDUAL rights, become aware that all are universally capable of moral thought, and accept that class, “group rights” and the rest of the dust political parasites kick up is the social construct they should be after.

A Russian Worth Listening To…

Svetlanin Kunin is a Russian worth listening to…

They Doth Fling Pooh from their Gilded Cage

First, let me quote Whittaker Chambers:

The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: "Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world." Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world.

But that’s neither here nor there, because the saintly attendies to the COP15 poverty and medievalism confab are themselves no Sistertian monks, charmers, or even humanistic stewards of the precious kidlets in whose name they want the rest of us to commit eco-cide. Andrew Bolt notes that at the miracle of the loaves and fishes in Copenhagen, the suffering weight of abundance weighs down many a soul attending.

”We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen…

Which means that their number of electro-pods and Toyota Piouses is wildly outnumbered by the people living on my block – ONE SIDE OF IT, in fact.



Buoyed by the usual puproseless agit-prop cum Klimantenschmutz of course:



“Can you smell that, son? Can you smell the mendacity?”

Moscow has announced that the Arctic will become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring … security in region"

During a week when big ideas have their shot at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, it’s clear the Arctic isn’t getting its share

writes John Vinocur concerning "the worst-case Great Game perspective of guns, gas leaks and oil spills, tanker collisions and nationalist jostling". As John Vinocur explains, the (ignored) problem is that

the Russians … seem more in a rush than the Atlantic Alliance players to create their own kind of Arctic facts.

They have experience in the region, but hardly a resounding record as great stewards of the environment. Their claim to half of the Arctic as their own was described in Halifax as “extravagant” by a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker.

In 2007, they planted a Russian flag under the North Pole. This year, Moscow’s National Security Council announced that the Arctic would become its “main resource base” by 2020, and plans for troops “capable of ensuring military security in the region.” In October, a Russian admiral said that helicopter carriers the Russian Navy hopes to buy from France were earmarked, in part, for its Arctic fleet.

But this could be just woofin’. … All the same, said Mr. Volker, who is managing director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations, “The Russians know what they want. They’ve got an Arctic fleet, and incentives to bring people to settle in the region. They want to develop gas fields. It’s not military aggression, but an attempt to build a comprehensive presence.” Washington, he said, “has been a little slow to put the pieces together. And we’re the only country to have the resources and political weight that can get a handle on the development of the region.”

Remember Kids, Daddy Drinks Because you Cry

Pravda makes beeg trouble for Correct-thinking Cadre

And we quote:

Now that the Czech Republic has announced it will ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will be even closer yet to becoming a unified monster state, with more than half a billion inhabitants. Inhabitants is the correct term, since “citizens” would indicate a set of political rights. The people living in the EU should rather be called “subjects,” since they have no influence whatsoever on the constitution of the centralized European government, the “European Commission.” The Europeans are allowed to vote for members of the European Parliament, but this body has about as much political power as the ineffectual German parliament meeting at Frankfurt in 1848. Political power in the EU is firmly in the hands of the European Commission, which is set to obtain even more power under the Lisbon Treaty. This infamous treaty does not hold the peoples of Europe in high regard. As a matter of fact, it is only halfway through the treaty (originally presented as a “Constitution”) that one finds the first references to the people.

Under your newly imposed constitutional privileges, you are permitted to register your surprise so long as I still feel like it.

Have a nice day.

Anarchists Like Siné Are Immature And Want Civilization To Be at the Degree Zero

Alain Abellard has a portrait of Siné, an anarchist who doubles as one of France's top (Dieudonné-type?) humorists… Says one reader:

Siné peut bien s'en aller au Paradis ou en Enfer. Qu'importe ! Les anars sont des immatures : il n'aiment pas l'homme tel qu'il est, mais tel qu'ils le rêvent. S'ensuit un galimatia infantile d'imprécations diverses, d'où ne peut sortir que la loi du plus fort, c'est-à-dire le degré zéro de la civilisation. Bon vent, les anars, mais restez discrets, s'il vous plaît.

Says another reader:

Sine, c’est un témoignage du passé, un voyage dans le temps. Cette hargne, cette outrance dans les propos, cette manière de voir la vie politique et sociale comme une guerre civile, de prendre des positions outrancières sur tous les sujets était la norme «dans le temps». Comment pouvait-on lire «Je suis partout», ai-je demandé un jour à un ancien. Comme on lit Sine aujourd’hui, répondit-il en sous-entendant que j’avais tort d’imaginer ma génération nécessairement meilleure que la sienne

At some point you just have to say....

...f**k you and the horse you rode in on:



Note: NP has no party affiliation

Compare and Contrast

Some inkling of an awareness of cause and effect have been located in EUropistan.

The first involves the usual Eur-obsession with a business that could only exist if you have large numbers of men with no discernable personality, and the other involves out of place, travelling rodentia. Same thing, really who thrive best when fed by others.

But first a word from their corporate sponsor, who will never ever go away.

Not nearly as Schlau as they Look

Germans, despite the official declaration, remain entranced with that Obama magic that never existed to begin with. So much so, that they’re searching feverishly to find new and politically acceptable ways to abandon the Afghans to the control of a minority of violent Jihadists. You know the type: the brown-red European politi-bots refer to them as being the whole of the Afghan population.

Observing Hermann, being an all-around Klug kind of dude, notes:

No pressure here, time or otherwise. Before not committing any new troops to Afghanistan, Germany wants to take all the time it needs to say no more thoroughly and convincingly and much, much later (around February or so). And why not take your time? They’re in the best of company here.

Interesting new way of making friends, that is.

In other words, “no”, like I said. Westerwelle did indicate that Germany is prepared to increase police trainers in Afghanistan, however. That German police training in Afghanistan has been a catastrophe up until now is another question altogether, but still.

Are Frenchmen the Europeans Most "Sensitized" to Global Warming Or Are They the Europeans Most "Brain-Washed" By the Media?

In response to a Le Monde headline hollering Les Français sont parmi les plus sensibilisés à la question du réchauffement, a few Le Monde readers send out a few pointers:

De fait les Français sont parmi les plus influencés par le matraquage des médias, particulièrement TV et Internet. …

Etant donné le matraquage éhonté auxquels ils sont soumis, il n'est pas surprenant que les français soient "parmi les plus sensibilisés".

La propagande écolo marche à plein régime ...

La France pratique l'omerta et la désinformation systématique sur le RCA. Les critiques sont traités de négationnistes. Les travaux récents de scientifiques non liés au GIEC ne sont jamais cités, car ils remetten en caus le pardigme du RCA. Et nous nous disons héritiers du siècle des Lumières ? Ne serions-nous pas plutôt ceux de l'Inquisition et de la Pensée Unique ?....

Meanwhile, Don Surber sums up the whole affair pretty neatly (merci à Larwyn):

They called us Global Warming Holocaust Deniers — sneered at us, snarked at us, and snubbed us.

None of them bothered to read “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I have no time for paybacks or saying I told you so.

But pay attention to why they fell for this billion-dollar hoax which almost became a trillion-dollar tragedy.

1. The pseudo-intellectuals fell for it because none of them ever cracked a science book.
2. The policy wonks fell for it because it gave the government more control.
3. The bleeding hearts fell for it because they always want to save the Earth.
4. The communists fell for it because it portrayed capitalists as destroying the Earth to make money.
5. The capitalists fell for it because they saw a new way to make money.
6. The Hollywood crowd fell for it because it made their pampered lives seem to have a meaning and purpose.
7. The newspapers fell for it because it was new.
8. The teachers fell for it because it was a new thing to teach the children to teach their parents.
9. The children fell for it because they wanted to show how well they are doing in school.
10. The parents fell for it because they wanted their children were doing so well in school and they wanted to be supportive.
11. The utility companies fell or it because they can raise rates.
12. The Nobel Peace Prize committee fell for it because Al Gore should have won in 2000.
13. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fell for it because Al Gore should have won in 2000.
14. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (Grammys) fell for it because Al Gore should have won in 2000.
15. The 30,000 scientists fell for it because while it was not in their field of study, they wanted to be supportive of science.

The only people who didn’t fall for it were we mouth-breathing, Bible-thumping, beer-guzzling, cousin-humping, baby-bumping, overfed, inbred, illiterate, gun-clinging, buck-toothed, trailer-park-living, truck-driving, ATV riding, Wal-mart shopping, knuckle-dragging, military-supporting, ain’t-recycling, patriotic, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, racist hillbillies with cooties.

Jimmy Gavroche Vs. Prince Zéfy le Bienheureux: World Wide Wrestling French Style

Aïe… Aïe… Aïe… Jimmy Gavroche, Monsieur Jacky Richard, Prince Zéfy le bienheureux, Divine Isabella la battante: those are some of the names of wrestling stars involved in Wrestling, French Style (click on the eyes in the narrow vertical frame below Le Monde's screen to see other wrestlers)…

Quand je finis un mec, j'aime bien plonger et l'écraser de tout mon poids. Je sais qu'il est écrabouillé comme une grosse limace immonde, et je sais qu'il va plus se relever. Et ça, j'adore ! (rires)

Petards all around

When this little journalistic stunt was cooked up weeks ago, it probably seemed like such a great idea .... at the time:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

At some point even those bansheeing this this type of thing will notice the screaming satire they are purveying. Then again, we are aware of how blind people can become when their religious faith is under attack.

iLaughed

The children at iCarly making far more climatological sense than anything currently coming out of either the 'experts' or Copenhagen:

“Thuggish Petro-State” Makes Beeg Trouble for Correct-thinking Cadre

By which Monboit means Canada. Monboit, sure of his central position in all of human perception says:

Canada's image lies in tatters.

Regardless that that is only Canada’s image to HIM. Puzzlingly, his editors still refer to him as a journalist.

The ¡No Pasarán! Film Festival Continues

“Is everybody in this world corrupt?”

“I don’t know everybody.”

The N-P silver screen meltdown marches ever forward in something familiar to European political observers, that is to say in goose steps. We present Billy Wilder’s 1961 madcap tale of Commie Berlinalia called One, Two, Three, which also happened to star Jimmy Cagney who brilliantly shows his comic timing and skill, even as Wilder turned the pace of the film up to 11.

Oddly enough, one of the many things that points out the humorlessness of “progressive” activist to this day is the fact that some of them still campaign cheerlessly and sadly unaware of irony against “Coca-Cola Imperialism”, as if their own not drinking the stuff wasn’t enough. I wonder if they realize that the concept was just one of Wilder’s jokes.



I strongly recommend renting or downloading this film! Not only will you not know where the time went, and possibly regret it, but you’ll find strange hidden gems in it, like a Messerschmitt micro-car that keeps appearing in the background, and momentary references to Carney’s “Little Caesar” character by an untitled supporting actor playing to Cagney, and another play on it with him asking for “Rico”. Along the way, look for a Khruchevesque banging of the shoe on a table, and a chillingly accurate portrait of the shambolic ruin that was East Berlin long AFTER this film was shot.

Layering it even more is the appearance of wonderful players like Leon Askin, (born Leo Aschkenasky) who sent up the temperament of a Soviet apparachik in this film, much as he later sent up the comically greedy Nazi General Burkhalter in the television comedy series, Hogan’s Heroes. Those mere moments in his long and rich career which included politically provocative cabaret as only the Viennese could do. Immigrating to America in 1940, he enlisted in the US Army, was stationed in Britain, and upon return to New York having been unable to find his parents who were sent to a Concentration Camp, he started a theater group made up entirely of Army veterans. Like Mel Brooks who served as a combat engineer and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, he seems to have understood that the most humiliating defeat an enemy can face is mockery.

What they share with Wilder, a Berliner transplanted to America himself, wasn’t just comic ability, creativity, but a keen sense of observation, matched to a functioning moral compass.

Juh Juh Juh Joker Face, Juh Juh Joker Face — Obamamaaaa!

Can we bankrupt this country?
Yes we can!

Why They Hate Us: That Despicable U.S. Foreign Policy

Stephen Walt has an article entitled Why they hate us: How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years? (shookhran to Larwyn), but do you know what is most despicable about U.S. foreign policy? "the fact … that the United States … killed a very large number of [German] individuals over … three decades"!

Around 1917-1918, American government officials (soldiers) murdered thousands, if not tens of thousands of Germans, for (almost) no reason whatsoever.

And then, because the Americans — those clueless retards — are moronic as well as blindly patriotic, 20-30 years later, they still had not learned the lessons of tolerance and understanding, and they again, for no reason whatsoever I tell you, started assassinating poor, innocent Germans again, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands!

No wonder why the Germans and their leaders in the 1910s and in the 1940s hated us… (Now, if only we could have tried a little more understanding…)

The Beatles: A Look Back

In the year 3000, the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit delves into 1,000 years of music history to bring light upon one of the 20th century's top groups (cheers to Larwyn)…

Le Monde Readers Accuse the Daily of Disinformation Regarding the Climategate Scandal

In its first in-depth (sic) analysis (sic) of the Climategate scandal, Le Monde assures its readers that

all of this does not affect, far from it, climate science, which is linked to the work of thousands of scientists.

Stéphane Foucart goes on to offer proof thereof, the most "biting" of which is that the scientists involved in the scandal were "sincerely convinced" of their work, while the work of the sceptics has been… "ridiculed".

Well yes, Stéphane Foucart, except that the whole premise underlying the "fact" that thousands of scientists (and millions of citizens worldwide) accept global warming as gospel truth, the "fact" that the scientists (sic) were "sincerely convinced" of their work, and the "fact" that the work of the sceptics is deserving of "ridicule", that whole premise turns out to be false.

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start

as the Wall Street Journal opines, which adds, for good measure, that

one is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim.

One Reason why most Europeans are Morons

Mr. Morales is expected to win re-election easily, in part because in many areas that he controls voters will be escorted into polling booths to make sure they choose correctly. His party, Movement for Socialism (aka MAS for its Spanish initials), is almost certain to retain control of the lower house of congress and is likely to win the senate, which until now has been controlled by the opposition.

Because they think THIS kind of thing is a social advancement adn "solidaristic". So much so, that many among them idolize the world’s grim human failures as “naturalistic”. Natural for them maybe.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule.

Those with some resignation and a vile sense of humor, no doubt will take a certain joy in having this lesson – the one that was taught to eastern Europeans and a million dead Cambodians at the end of a stick – taught once more.

While the U.S. and the Organization of American States have been obsessing over Honduras's legal removal of an undemocratic president, Mr. Morales has been fortifying his narco-dictatorship. He's also made friends with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will make another visit to La Paz tomorrow.

The only question is: who many decades will it take, and how many tens of million must die for the “progressives” of this world to put their ideology in line with what they claim to be their ethical framework.

But isn’t she too old to be Molested as a Minor?

Perhaps it’s her child-like curiosity...

PARIS (AP) - Woody Allen has successfully courted France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

But to actually add some life to the story, and the sort of flippant, ill-cast silliness that comes with French TV, you need some real talent to show up and save the day:

Allen "asked me to be in his next film," she said Monday on Canal Plus television, where she appeared for an interview and duet with crooner Harry Connick Jr.

How Much Longer Can We Wait Until We Tackle Global Warming?!

More horrific global warming news from down South:

Wish I could send a video of this morning to all of you.

It is snowing.

On the 2nd day of Deceber it is snowing in Texas.

LOL!

That sort of "pretty snow". The big fluffy flakes.

No wind, no biting cold temperatures.

The kind of snow that makes you want to

walk aournd out in it and feel the wet fluffy

flakes touch your face.

The fluttering puffs of white that make you think you are

standing inside in a snow dome.

The friendly snow that doesn't stick to sidewalks or roads.

The perfect kind of snow.

Every one in [our] house was delighted to

see last night's drizzle turn into this. …

The morning has that soft hush that only comes from snow.

Take care, hope every one's day is going well.

(Now, I know you folks who live with this stuff

all the time are just rolling your eyes. Indulge me, please.

We don;t usually get snow. It is too warm for it, we normally

get ice. Ice, we get. Oh, do we ever!)

It's time we do something!

Sarkozy: “France will not send a single soldier more”

How is that new respect for our friends and allies workin' for ya, BHO?

If You Are Are Not in Favor of BHO or His Policies, You Are Not Qualified to Render an Opinion

I'll be honest with you, Diane, I'm not entirely sure what qualifies the former Vice President to render an opinion on Afghanistan

is how the White House press secretary answered Diane Sawyer's question on Dick Cheney's criticism of the Apologizer-in-Chief's war policies (thanks to Scott Whitlock via Larwyn).

Hello-oooo! Are you kidding, Robert Gibbs?! The man was in the vice-president's chair when 9-11 happened, for Christ's sakes, and when the decision to send troops to Afghanistan was made and he was at the helm of power for more than seven years after that!

Can you imagine the — rightful — outrage, not least from the TV interviewer, if, say, Dick Cheney himself had said that he was "not entirely sure what qualifies Al Gore to render an opinion" on Afghanistan, on global warming, on whatever subject? (Well, come to think of it, Al Gore on global warming…)

That was the specifics. More generally, the comment shows the left's tendency to think that no opponent of the White House (or simply a skeptical person) is qualified — remember Obama's admonition that conservatives should shut up and let him do the ruling and make the decisions? — to render an opinion on leftist policies…

In other matters, Maggie's Farm quotes two veterans regarding Obama's West Point speech (you know, the one without the words "win" or "victory" in it):

Obama graduated from Columbia and he knows absolutely nothing about US and World history. Nothing! Listening to him reminds me being in a coffee shop in the late 60s, trying to make my move on a beautiful girl, but as the 4th international idiocies tumbled out of her mouth, the beauty slowly vanished, and chastity became easy--at least with her. Four things can kill sexual desire: hunger, exhaustion, fear, and listening to an idiot.

The previous person quoted is "a combat veteran, a journalist, a frontline refugee aid worker, a man of the cloth, a professor, major scholar, a mentor and example to generations":

Obama says Afghanistan is different from Vietnam because in Afghanistan we are not facing "a broad-based popular insurgency." So it was the "broad-based insurgency" that finally won in Vietnam? Why are there so many Vietnamese in this country? Why did South Vietnam become a gulag for twenty years after 1975? (I went back for the first time in 1995, and it was one of the most oppressive societies I have ever experienced.) Where did the soldiers in the South Vietnamese army come from? If North Korea were to overtake South Korea tomorrow, would it be the result of a broad-based insurgency? The entire North Vietnamese army--after we had withdrawn all support from the South--overran the country. Not the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese Army. Some South Vietnamese units fought to the last man. Some were still fighting a rear guard action in the central highlands for five years after the fall of Saigon.

…Obama doesn't believe that any war can ever be legitimate. Read his speeches from Cairo, Normandy, or Berlin. He has talked about the progress of American blacks from slavery to his presidency, without ever mentioning the civil war. It just didn't happen. It was like the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was no military involved, no "cold war," people just "came together" and the wall fell.

GOP Litmus Test: Reagan’s 10 Unity Principles

Several Republican National Committee members have proposed a conservative litmus test for candidates who wish to receive support from the RNC, writes Jillian Bandes.

These committee members say the test is essential to fixing the RNC, and one step toward rebuilding the Republican brand. … Here are the ten Reagan’s Unity Principles.

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and,

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Washington's Afghan Strategy Frustrates the Europeans

Good job, Apologizer-in-Chief! On repairing relations with Europe and on getting everybody on board towards a common future. A recent headline in Le Monde (two weeks prior to BHO's decision on adding troops to Afghanistan) shows the long path we have come since the days of Bush: La stratégie afghane de Washington déconcerte les Européens. (Still, notice how France's newspaper of reference manages to avoid saying: Obama's Afghan Strategy Frustrates the Europeans, whereas it would probably have used "Bush" in the headline during the previous administration…)

Instapundit has more on the overseas reviews for Obama’s foreign policy…

Georgia Does Not Want to Be the Victim of Obama's Russia Policy

"Georgia does not want to be the victim" of the Obama administration and its revision of U.S. policy towards Russia. That is the first sentence in Piotr Smolar's Le Monde article.

Après des années de relations étroites avec l'administration Bush, les autorités de Tbilissi ont assisté, inquiètes, aux tentatives de rapprochement entre Washington et Moscou initiées par Barack Obama sur certains dossiers clés comme le désarmement ou le programme nucléaire de l'Iran.

Foreign minister Grigol Vachadze, 20% of whose country is occupied by the Russians, has gone to Paris to bring about a closer relationship both with the EU and NATO, but also to voice his worries about France's sale of a Mistral-class warship to the Kremlin.

L'Estonie, membre de l'UE, a déjà fait part de ses interrogations. "Tout le monde est très inquiet dans la région, reconnaît le ministre. Il s'agit d'un navire de dernière génération pouvant accueillir, si je me rappelle bien, 16 hélicoptères d'assaut, 900 soldats, 16 véhicules blindés. Où irait un tel navire ? Pas dans la Baltique contre la Finlande, ni dans le Pacifique contre le Japon ou la Chine. Tout le monde sait que ce serait dans la mer Noire, contre l'Ukraine et la Géorgie."

Meanwhile Le Monde's readers (most of them, at least) are (as usual) going gaga over Russia…

Social Life Board Game Commercial

Get lazy in the Game of Social Life.
You can spend more time with your kids and your wife.

"You fall behind on your mortgage. Yes! Collect $1000 every turn."
"You're current on your mortgage. Pay an extra $1000 every turn."

What concerns BHO is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy; what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Dems

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously

writes Karl Rove.

What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card.

In Le Monde's Comments, We Read Nothing But Bolshevik-Type Speeches Typical of the Era When the Left Kowtowed Before Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

Un lecteur résume bien, à lui seul, la totalité des réactions des lecteurs du Monde à la nouvelle (la "nouvelle", mis à part le fait que je l'avais entendu dès 2002 ou 2003) que les Etats-Unis étaient en mesure de capturer Ben Laden en 2001 :

On pourrait attendre des lecteurs qu'ils fassent au moins le partage entre la "bêtise" de Bush et les crimes des intégristes ! Que non, nous avons droit à un discours type bolchevique digne du temps où la gauche idolâtre se mettait à genoux devant Moscou, Pékin, La Havane... effarant !

Swiss Citizens Forbid the Construction of New Minarets in Switzerland

The results of Sunday's referendum in Switzerland are in: to the "immense surprise" of pollsters, 57% of Swiss citizens voted in favor of the motion to ban the further construction of minarets in the country (the four under construction will be allowed to be finished), as did 22 of the confederation's 26 cantons. (The decision seems to concern minarets proper, not mosques in general…) Most French citizens applaud or, at least, profess to understand…

J'étais chez moi, en train de boire de boire un verre avec des amis, deux Anglais, un Hollandais, un Kabyle et un Malien, lorsque la nouvelle est tombée : "une immense surprise" ! Grand éclat de rire général ! Oh my god, c'est la dictature de la majorité. Non mais, franchement, de qui se fout-on ?

Quand le résultat du vote n'est pas "politiquement correct", certains remettent en cause le principe de la votation! Souhaitent-ils un Comité Central pour dire ce qui est bien, approuvé à 95% par un vote "encadré",et mal, donc réprimé?

Le même référendum dans n'importe quel pays occidental donnerait les mêmes résultats. L'islam n'est plus perçu comme une religion mais avant tout comme un mouvement politique et culturel menaçant. Le refus des organisations musulmanes de condamner la burqua, l'absence de réactions au lendemain du 11-Septembre, ont été lus comme des solidarités communautaristes qui primaient sur les solidarités citoyennes. Ce vote a le mérite de briser le discours angélique.

Cela démontre, si besoin était, l'ignorance des commentateurs (journalistes et hommes politiques) sur l'état de l'opinion. A force de vivre entre eux, de se coopter de façon endogamique, loin de la réalité populaire, de ne pas s'appliquer la mixité sociale et culturelle qu'ils prônent, de prendre leurs désirs pour des réalités, ils ne voient jamais rien venir. Le résultat d'une pareille consultation serait le même dans tous les pays de l'Union Européenne, à commencer par la France.

On peut imaginer le résultat d'un tel référendum en France mais ne nous y trompons pas. A l'image de notre belle Europe "démocratique", une telle question ne sera jamais posée en France car nos élites qui ne vivent pas comme la majorité du peuple sont les seules à voir un "enrichissement" dans une immigration non contrôlée. L'avantage avec les suisses, c'est que normalement on ne va pas leur poser la question jusqu'à ce qu'ils disent "oui" pour leur bien...

Significatif aussi semble être le fait qu'un nombre significatif de sondés aient caché leur véritable intention — les pronostics fondés sur les sondages donnaient un "non" massif à l'interdiction...— et n'ait osé dire leur refus des minarets que dans l'isoloir: scrupule moral ou peur de représailles?

Now, Don’t go Calling them the Axis of Evil!

Judy the exceedingly insightful points out the newly refashioned notion of what “tolerance” and “justice” now is among Britain’s bright lights:

Stephen Pollard, Harry's Place and Normblog have all drawn attention to a blatantly anti-semitic article by a former Ambassador in today's Independent which objects to the presence of two of the distinguished historians on the panel of the Iraq Enquiry on the grounds that they are Jews. And that's taken by the writer, Oliver Miles, as of itself proof that the panel is unbalanced.

Note, that this is an “enquiry” panel.

Hint number one: they were interviewed on Iran’s Propagandastaffel, Press TV.

Fix Bayonets!

RIP, Lewis L. Millett, who received the Medal of Honor during the Korean War for leading what was reportedly the last major American bayonet charge…

All those in favour, say Aye. Opposed, No. So ordered!

Now sit down and shut the hell up!

The Chair rules that sometimes this whole democracy thing can be a little bit too cumbersome.

If it's Farage....

...you know it is going to be good:

His Pre-existing Conditions are Entirely Political

Which is why THIS old man will never face a death panel. It turns out that Neo-Nazi and politically active Democrat James Von Brunn, is having all of his medical issues taken care of by the loving teat of Gub’mint. Inasmuch as a non-felon would not get the same degree of care and attention after the system is nationalized, we will find ourselves competing for resources with attempted mass murders, all thanks to the lefty over-powerful fetishisation of the State, a trait that world view shares without question with history’s fascists and tyrants.